If there ever was any indicator that the Rangers franchise has not seen anything like the Yu Darvish media circus, it was in evidence today. Forget the bazillion photographers who followed him around. That kind of thing has been seen before (although not in that quantity). What really impacted me was this:
The game was not scheduled to be on television. It wasn’t scheduled to be on the radio, either. It was, however scheduled to be webcast on mlb.com. However, since Yu Darvish was starting – and more importantly it was his first start… The first two innings were on regular radio. Then the game went off the radio, and was exclusively on the regularly scheduled mlb.com webcast. That’s mind boggling. That a brand new pitcher, one who has yet to throw a single pitch in the majors had the power to change the broadcast schedule to include JUST his appearance on the mound. That’s amazing.
I unfortunately didn’t get to hear any of it, due to some personal stuff going on at the time. I was hoping to watch it on TXA21’s “The Fan” Sports Show, but it was pre-empted for bloody college basketball. What a waste. College basketball over Major League Baseball coverage? Vomit. Anyway, I did see a little of it on NBC news highlights, and I did watch video on mlb.com (some of which is embedded below). But he was as advertised in his two innings. Scoreless outing, struck out three of the six outs he got. Threw 36 pitches, 26 of them for strikes. Allowed two hits, and made a good defensive play – the kind you don’t see too many US pitchers make. So it was a good outing. But it was just the first apperance of spring. A lot more to come.
The five other pitchers the Rangers threw out there were not guys who will break with the team. The last one gave up the two runs that Padres did get in the 9th inning. So not a lot to conclude about the pitching staff in this game.
Offensively, we were led by another non 25 man guy, Alberto Gonzalez, who went 3-3 and had three RBI’s. Overall, the team had just nine hits, and eight of them were singles. There was just one extra base hit, a double by David Murphy. So not a ton of offense here. The Padres also only walked two, so this was one of those efficent offenses.
But lets’ face it. The only thing most people wanted to know about this game was about Yu Darvish, anyway. :)
